[Summit] USPS and Brian's idea

[Jonathan Howard]

Members of the SNA Board have been talking about how to make this kind of 
anecdotal information useful in improving the neighborhood. It came up 
before with our discussion of recent vandalism and crime. Brian's idea is 
on our longterm agenda. Maybe we should move it up.

It's important for people to speak up directly and let the responsible 
authorities know our problems and what we expect to be done for us case by 
case. However, if we only act individually, we never know whether our 
problem is a rare instance or a systemic problem. We don't know how many 
other people got ignored or mis-served or given an altogether different 
story. We don't learn from others who have had the same problem.

For SNA, the lack of data makes it hard for us to act. It's not our task 
(and we don't have the horsepower) to intervene in most individual cases... 
but it is our job to spot significant shared problems and see whether we 
can whip up a committee to do something about it. Like anyone else, we can 
generalize one or two reports into a bigger problem than they really 
represent. Or we can fail to see patterns of significant problems cropping up.

But if neighbors share our problems, as on this list, we can get a reality 
check. I'm happy with my mail, but if you seem to be having a problem, you 
know you are not alone (and I can't say you are crazy!). The PO does seems 
to have a problem it should fix.

However, this list exists for discussion and community-building, not 
incident tracking. It's really not feasible for SNA volunteers to collate 
and forward our anecdotes to various offices on any regular basis.

What I've been thinking of is whether we could offer neighbors a Web-based 
vehicle for making individual reports to responsible people that would also 
create an ongoing record. It wouldn't replace any other channel and we 
couldn't expect to capture 100% of anything, but we might well collect 
enough to be useful. I'm thinking of a Web-based "complaint department" 
with standard forms for various types of issues: mail delivery, minor 
vandalism and petty crime, city services, etc. Like this list, it would be 
totally voluntary. We'd have to address privacy concerns. It would need to 
be simple to use and operate.

To inform the board's consideration, I would appreciate your thoughts on 
this idea and any tips or experiences you may have had with systems like 
what I've described.


Jonathan Howard
President, Summit Neighborhood Association
401 331 2272
jhoward at sna.providence.ri.us